Bengaluru: Cybercrime Fraudsters loot ` 150 cr from Bengalureans yearly

Bengaluru : In the state capital Bengaluru, which is portrayed as a hotspot for cyber thieves, out of 50,027 cybercrime cases registered in the last 7 years, only 26 people have been convicted.

Controlling cybercrime is a bigger headache for the state government than traffic congestion and air pollution in the city. In 38,132 cases registered in 7 years, the investigation has stalled without finding even a hint of the cyber crooks.

Several people who have lost lakhs of rupees are tired of running around to the police station. Even though the state government has provided the cyber police department with manpower and modern equipment, cyber thieves continue to cheat innocent people by looting crores of rupees finding a new way of fraud every day.

In Bengaluru, 2 cyber thieves were convicted in 2017, 7 each in 2018 and 2019, 2 in 2020, 3 in 2021, and 5 in 2022. In 2023, not a single fraudster has been punished so far. Out of 6,226 cases registered in 6 months, only 16 cases were detected.

Techies, bank employees, employees of big private companies are the most settled in Bengaluru. 70% of them do business online. Thus, cyber thieves are sitting in the some part of North India, targeting Bengaluru and extorting more than Rs 150 crore rupees annually.

In the CEN stations, the work of collecting evidence is going on by using the cyber forensic equipment, taking the mirror image of the electronic devices. Trained personnel are deployed and imparted training on law, cybercrime, investigative procedure, communication skills.

If a call is made to 1930 or 112 helpline and information given within one hour of being cheated, a CIR case will be registered immediately and the accused’s bank account will be frozen. In 2023, Rs 17 crore was confiscated in 4,090 cases of calls to the helpline till July.